Image for representation purposes only
Amy Silver moved to London in 1989, from what is now Harare, Zimbabwe. At the age of seventeen, with a father who was an economics professor and financial journalist, Amy went on to study economics, politics and philosophy at Oxford. Soon, she too found herself working as a business journalist. She worked for the British daily newspaper The Times until 2004, going freelance thereafter.
And then came the 2009 recession. And times got harder. Markets crashed. There wasn’t much work for Amy. And the rates were bad for the work she could find.
So, she turned to writing fiction. Between 2009 and 2011, Amy rolled out four books: Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista (2009), All I Want For Christmas (2010), One Minute to Midnight (2011) and Reunion (2013). Extremely women friendly, light-hearted rom-coms with elements of drama, and even one with a Christmas holiday themed story, the books just didn’t sell. Moreover, each book seemed to get progressively darker, more violent and tragic, and eventually too “heavy and intense” to sit within the intended “rom-com” section of the library.
Amy found herself financially at sea; right to the point where she was faced with the bleak prospect of having to sell her house and switch careers entirely. Disheartened, she decided to try one last hand before she walked away. In a state of panic, and with a loan borrowed from her father, Amy spent six months writing full-time. The story: A twisted murder mystery about a woman’s mysterious disappearance and its aftermath.
Stretched to the limit for both cash and hope, Amy ended up submitting a half-finished manuscript to a publisher.
As of today, that manuscript is a New York Times bestseller, and a motion picture: The Girl on the Train. And ‘Amy Silver’ is really only Paula Hawkins.
By Valentine Gonsalves
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/21/the-girl-on-the-train-paula-hawkins-new-gone-girl-female-thriller-authors-gillian-flynn
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/31/books/paula-hawkinss-journey-to-the-girl-on-the-train.html
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/19/paul-hawkins-girl-on-the-train-interview
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-girl-on-the-train-by-paula-hawkins-book-review-suburban-noir-goes-native-9984287.html
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/english/movie-reviews/the-girl-on-the-train/movie-review/54699099.cms
Other Links:
http://paulahawkinsbooks.com/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1063732.Paula_Hawkins
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